COVID Fixed My Shoulder (in a weird, roundabout way)

Absent the pandemic, I would never have discovered dissident doctors--or DMSO!

[The material posted regarding Dimethyl Sulfoxide (DMSO) reflects the author's opinions and does not represent the official position of the FLCCC. We are actively reviewing the scientific data and ongoing research regarding DMSO and will provide an official statement once a thorough evaluation has been completed. The FLCCC remains committed to basing its recommendations on the most current and robust scientific evidence.]

Around two years ago, I woke up one morning in piercing pain. For some inexplicable reason—there’d been no injury or accident or even an overzealous upper body workout—I literally couldn’t lift my right arm. When I tried, it felt as if Jason Momoa were pinning it to my side with all of his strength while also stabbing me in the deltoid with a fiery poker. With the slightest movement, pain ricocheted from my neck to my fingertips and back like a lightning bolt trapped in a metal tube.

“Maybe you pulled something or pinched a nerve,” the Internet said. “Give it a few days.”

A few days did not bring relief. Nor did chiropractic adjustments, physical therapy treatments, the shoulder reliever, stretching, massage, electric muscle stimulation, grounding sheets, or my trusty infrared sauna blanket. As a last resort, I succumbed to an excruciating cortisone shot, which turned out to be a waste of time, money, and profanity.

I was diagnosed with adhesive capsulitis—more commonly known as frozen shoulder—a torturous to-put-it-mildly condition that occurs when the connective tissue enclosing the shoulder joint thickens and tightens. Its cause remains a medical mystery, and—fun fact!—it affects women (particularly those exactly at and around my age) far more frequently than men. On the agony scale, and I can say this as I have experienced all three, it’s up there with drug-free childbirth and having a massive patch of gravel scrubbed from your bleeding backside with a wire brush.

In nearly all cases, frozen shoulder improves over time—“time” typically being anywhere from eighteen months to three years. I wasn’t merely unable to play pickleball or table tennis; I literally could not put a shirt on by myself. I couldn’t scratch my back when it itched or put my hair in a ponytail. Retrieving something from an upper cabinet or shelf required fetching a ladder or summoning my husband. A comfortable sleeping position did not exist. I cried a lot.

Slowly, almost imperceptibly, I thought my condition might be beginning to improve. (You learn to manage and almost become numb to chronic pain, so it can be hard to be sure.) Then a few months ago—and believe me, I wish I were making this up—I woke up with the same thing in my left shoulder. By this point I’d talked to dozens of friends who had suffered the same affliction, and not a single one had been stricken with this bilateral blight.

The brutal three-year clock had been reset to zero and I had already tried everything. If a 36-month elective coma had been offered to me, I’m not sure I would have said no.

Luckily, I subscribe to A Midwestern Doctor’s Substack, The Forgotten Side of Medicine. Like an unexpected tax refund showing up the same day as your post-holiday Visa bill, this arrived in my inbox:

DMSO, short for Dimethyl Sulfoxide, is a colorless, odorless organic compound that basically is to countless syndromes and conditions what ivermectin is to Covid (and cancer). Right up front in the extremely long and well-cited pieced, AMD pointed out two very interesting things:

1. “DMSO is a remarkably effective pain-killing agent, in many cases allowing individuals who’d been disabled for years by their pain (e.g., a failed spine surgery or severe arthritis—DMSO’s most popular use) to get their lives back. Furthermore, it can treat many types of pain other therapies do not work on (e.g., complex regional pain syndrome).”

2. “If DMSO were to become the standard of care due to its remarkably high success rate in treating a variety of common conditions, it would completely change the practice of medicine in the United States and likely knock many existing approaches out of business.”

Per AMD’s exhaustive diatribe, DMSO can be beneficial in treating asthma, inflammatory bowel disease, cystitis, lupus, MS, scleroderma, arthritis, bursitis, fibromyalgia, restless leg syndrome, cystic fibrosis, Alzheimer’s, collagen disorders, strokes, heart attacks, dementia, varicose veins, and more.

And many (most?) people have never heard of it.

By this stage of the game, it should not have surprised me that the powers that be—the alphabet agencies, our sick-care system, the pharmaceutical industrial complex, the medical cartel, whatever you choose to call it—would be so evil as to dismiss, discredit, demonize or defame a simple, safe, inexpensive, and most importantly effective treatment for anything. They did it with laetrile, an apricot seed derivative, for cancer (there’s an incredible essay about the doctor who was destroyed for saving lives with laetrile in the 1970s in my anthology, Yankee Doodle Soup). They did it with ivermectin for Covid. They’ve done it with chiropractic medicine and acupuncture and homeopathy and vitamin therapy for decades. They’re doing it with cannabis and ozone therapy and ultraviolet blood irradiation as I type.

I might have sprained a finger in my rush to get my hands on a bottle of DMSO. At the suggestion of a perfect stranger who commented on one of the posts I read, I mixed it half-and-half with organic castor oil and had my husband apply it topically to both shoulders before bed because I literally could not cross my arms to touch my own shoulders. I thought finding a not-miserable sleeping position was a tiny bit easier than usual that night, but I wrote it off as placebo effect and drifted off.

In the morning, the difference was palpable—literally. For the first time in years, I was able to lift both arms above my head. I still felt the familiar stiffness and I had nowhere near full range of motion and I knew if I made a dramatic or sudden movement I would deeply regret it. But just being able to feign a victory salute was like a gift from the flexibility gods.

In the few weeks since, my pain has decreased by probably 85 percent. I can apply the DMSO myself, a task that was unthinkable when I began. I’ve written before about the “gifts of Covid” and I have absolutely added this experience to that list.

Absent of the pandemic, I would never have discovered dissident doctors like Pierre Kory, Paul Marik, AMD, William Makis, Meryl Nass, Ahmad “Doc” Malik, Naomi Wolf and countless others who risk their lives and livelihoods to share critical, often censored information.

I’d no doubt still be trusting system-indoctrinated physicians and, I shudder to admit, lining up for my annual flu shot. I might even be buying into the RFK Jr.-as-raging-antivax-conspiracy-theorist propaganda. Unquestionably, I’d still be immobilized in pain, impatiently waiting for my frozen shoulders to thaw on their own.

Tell me about the best and most maligned “alternative treatment” you’ve discovered (that Pharma desperately wishes you hadn’t) in the comments. :)